Building Worlds: Timbral Analysis of Film Music by Daniel Godsil (MC ’15)

Join us on December 13th at 7:00pm EST via Zoom for “Building Worlds: Timbral Analysis of Film Music,” a presentation and Q&A by composer and class of 2015 Music Composition alumnx Daniel Godsil. Register for the Zoom event in advance and invite any peers and connections to attend! 

Read more about Godsil’s work and process:

“Film composers devote considerable time and energy to building a timbral lexicon or “soundworld” for every project. In fact, timbre is the foremost concern throughout the compositional process for many film composers, often superseding pitch structure (e.g theme, harmony, tonal goals). Historically, this emphasis on timbre over pitch structure comes from a practical place—complex pitch structures need time to develop independently, and thus compete with the dramatic action of a film, whereas tone color alone can provide immediate dramatic accompaniment. Many analyses of film music prioritize the development of theme and its adjacent pitch structures over timbre; the analyses in this dissertation flip these priorities. Through close readings of works by John Williams, Ennio Morricone, and Sergei Prokofiev, I focus on the soundworld of film scores when I analyze them, like film composers do when they compose them. I use several timbral analysis methods to achieve this focus, including the traditional study of orchestration, musical gesture analysis, embodied cognition research, and acousmatic music theory.” – Daniel Godsil (MC ’15)